While we believe we at EKOS did a good job charting the direction of the election and some of the historic shifts that occurred, we were caught flat footed in not predicting the majority victory for the Conservative Party. We correctly predicted a Conservative victory but not the majority.

Our final estimate of Conservative support fell well outside of the margin of error and, while it was not that far off the industry averages, we were unfortunately on the low side of this crucial prediction.

While missing the Conservative rebound was a critical failing, there were many positives that we can take from this election. We believe EKOS did a good job in being the first to clearly identify three crucial new developments that have reshaped the Canadian political landscape:

EKOS correctly noted early in the campaign an important shift to the NDP, which we correctly estimated would see the NDP as Official Opposition with more than 100 seats. We were roundly pilloried for this prediction from those who claimed nothing was happening in the campaign and that the NDP vote would collapse.

We correctly noted the death spiral of the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec early in the campaign, which was also greeted with near universal skepticism. Our final prediction of a virtual sweep of the Bloc and a 60-plus seat performance by the NDP was borne out.

We also correctly documented and commented on the collapse of the Liberal Party, although we failed to foresee a crucial switch of some of the residual Liberal vote go to the Conservatives. This miss was most of the source of missing the Conservative majority.

As noted, we badly underestimated the final Conservative majority victory but in fairness, the aggregate of all polling firms final numbers did not point to such an outcome. Some can say they clearly saw it but most of the hard numbers leaned to a Conservative minority (as estimated on Three Hundred and Eight). Our numbers were on the lower boundaries but within the margin of error of the industry aggregate estimate for the Conservative Party. We were off by an unacceptably large 5.7 points, although we were much closer on all other party estimates. This error did, however, put us in the bottom half of the industry performance this time. This is also the first time ever that we have failed to accurately predict the final outcome of a federal election.

We believe that beyond random errors due to sampling and measurement error that our underestimate was rooted in two factors:

There was a late movement of Liberal supporters to the Conservative Party which shifted about three points to the Conservatives (half of our shortfall).

The actual voters had a heavier concentration of Conservative voters who were more committed and enthusiastic and hence came out and voted in greater numbers than other parties. We included an adjusted estimate of final vote which we ran on Sunday but regrettably decided not to run with. This model combined firmness and enthusiasm measures and if we had used it we would have quite accurately called the race. Frankly, we failed to believe our own results and the fact that the gap on those who said they were “certain to vote” had largely disappeared. We therefore didn’t apply the correction that we had developed which showed the CPC advantage which was clearly revealed on Monday.

In closing, we would like to thank the tens of thousands of Canadians who generously responded to our surveys. We would also like to acknowledge sincere appreciation of our partners at iPolitics who did a great job in covering this election. We would also like to thank those who have provided advice, comments, and feedback throughout the election, particularly in the world of social media.

We congratulate some of our competitors who came closer to the final result and commiserate with those who missed. We do, however, feel that our research was second to none in charting the evolution of the campaign even though it fell short in the match to final outcomes.

Finally, we congratulate all those who participated in the political process and recognize the passion and effort that they bring to Canadian democracy. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party are to be congratulated on having won a clear and decisive mandate to lead the country.